Isaiah 42:19,20

MERCY BLIND

‘Who is blind, but My servant? or deaf, as My messenger that I sent? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord’s servant? Seeing many things, but thou observest not; opening the ears, but he heareth not.’

Isaiah 42:19

I. As Mediator, ‘the Man Christ Jesus’ came to be God’s ‘Servant,’ ‘to finish the work which He gave Him to do,’ and to be His ‘ messenger,’ speaking ‘not His own words but the words of Him that sent Him.’ It is of Christ, then, in His character as Mediator, that the prophet is here speaking. How is He blind and deaf? He is blind, not because He does not see, but because He will not ‘observe’ what He sees. He is deaf, not because He does not hear, but because He will not ‘be extreme to mark’ and impute what He hears.

II. Oh! if He had been only man, or like one of us, where should any one of us have now been?—Surely like Judas, ‘in our own place.’ But the Blessed Jesus, Himself ‘perfect,’ ‘for Whose righteousness’ sake the Lord is well pleased,’ Who (by His sinless obedience) ‘has magnified the law and made it honourable’—is ‘touched with the feeling of our infirmities,’ and while He opens our ears to hear His voice, closes His own to our sinful, careless, cold, idle words, and shuts His eyes to the failings of His poor brethren, for whom He shed His blood, and pleads the merits of that blood-shedding continually before the throne of God.

Canon Champneys.